Monday, December 14, 2015

Presidential candidate Marco Rubio attempts to portray those who stand against marriage equality as victims. It's a non sequitir made famous by former NOM head Maggie Gallagher and a cynical attempt to take attention off of the fact that lgbts won the right to marriage equality fair and square.

It is also an attempt to erase our families and children from the public debate. Coming out of Rubio's deceptive mouth, the phrase "traditional values" seems to be a buzzword to claim that lgbt relationships and families are inferior.

Indiana’s Limited LGBT Protections Under Fire By Lawsuit - For those who think the fight for equality is over, if the Rubio piece above doesn't bother you, then check this one out. People actually sit around crafting plans to take away lgbt rights, even if they aren't many. And they are paid good money to do it.

NPR hosted a spokesman from a notorious anti-gay hate group during a
discussion of same-sex adoption, giving him a national platform to
peddle misinformation about same-sex parenting.

On the December 10 edition of NPR's The Diane Rehm Show, guest host Melissa Ross interviewed Peter Sprigg,
Senior Fellow for Policy Studies at the Family Research Council (FRC)
to discuss legal battles over parenting and adoption rights for same-sex
couples.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has listed FRC as an anti-gay hate group since 2010
due to the organization's propagation of known falsehoods about LGBT
people. The group has a history of making wild and inflammatory attacks
on LGBT equality while masquerading as a serious policy organization in the media. Sprigg, who served as an ordained Baptist minister before joining FRC, has called for recriminalizing gay sex in the U.S. and suggested LGBT people should be "export[ed]" from the country.

But NPR didn't identify Sprigg as a hate group spokesman, and Sprigg
used the platform to peddle misinformation about LGBT equality. Sprigg
cited a widely discredited paper to suggest that children raised by same-sex couples perform poorly, and resurrected the long debunked
horror story that Catholic adoption agencies have been shut down for
refusing to serve same-sex couples. While guest host Melissa Ross did
not push back on Sprigg's talking points, fellow guest Emily
Hetch-McGowan, Director of Public Policy the Family Equality
Council, called out FRC's use of discredited research

I am not one for shutting down views or keeping points of view from being debated, but Media Matters does make a good point. The media cannot ignore the fact that the Family Research Council has an ugly history of spinning distortions and lies against the lgbt community. And the organization should not be treated as a credible source when it comes to issues of same-sex parenting or any other lgbt issue.

But I'm not totally upset at NPR because, while the network gave Sprigg a platform to spread more distortions, it also provided a platform for actual experts and people in the know (Hetch-McGowan, Michele Zavos -
managing partner and founder of Zavos Juncker Law Group, a metropolitan D.C. area firm specializing in family law, and Martin Gill
plaintiff in the lawsuit which overturned Florida's ban on adoption by same-sex couples
) to refute Sprigg and expose him as a liar.

The following are portions of the debate (in transcript form) in which Sprigg was called out:

About Me

Alvin McEwen is 46-year-old African-American gay man who resides in Columbia, SC.
McEwen's blog, Holy Bullies and Headless Monsters, and writings have been mentioned by Americablog.com, Goodasyou.org, People for the American Way, PageOneQ.com, The Washington Post, Raw Story, The Advocate, Media Matters for America, Crooksandliars.com, Thinkprogress.org, Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish, Melissa Harris-Perry, The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell, Newsweek, The Daily Beast, The Washington Blade, and Foxnews.com.
In addition, he is also a past contributor to Pam's House Blend,Justice For All, LGBTQ Nation, and Alternet.org. He is a present contributor to the Daily Kos and the Huffington Post,
He is the 2007 recipient of the Harriet Daniels Hancock Volunteer of the Year Award and the 2010 recipient of the Order of the Pink Palmetto from the SC Pride Movement as well as the 2009 recipient of the Audre Lorde/James Baldwin Civil Rights Activist Award from SC Black Pride. In addition, he is a three-time nominee of the Ed Madden Media Advocacy Award from SC Pride.